Exhaustion, sweat don’t translate to good workout

Question: I am a 60-year old woman who started to weight train and do cardiovascular exercises three months ago. My workouts are challenging and intense and are performed three times a week.

I leave the gym exhausted and sweating, so I know I am putting in the necessary effort to lose weight. Last week I weighed in 4 pounds heavier than normal and I watched my food intake carefully. Could it be muscle weight gain?

JIM LaFOUNTAIN

Question: I am a 60-year old woman who started to weight train and do cardiovascular exercises three months ago. My workouts are challenging and intense and are performed three times a week.
I leave the gym exhausted and sweating, so I know I am putting in the necessary effort to lose weight. Last week I weighed in 4 pounds heavier than normal and I watched my food intake carefully. Could it be muscle weight gain?

Answer: It is physiologically impossible for you to gain 4 pounds of muscle in 90 days without growth enhancing drugs. Although you are to be commended for engaging in intense physical exercise, you are probably making some very common training mistakes.

* Restricted nutritional diets force the body into survival mode, actually fighting itself to maintain a particular weight. Women who ingest less than 1,200 calories a day and men eating fewer than 1,800 calories each day will experience this metabolic slowdown.

It may help to envision that you are stranded in a desert without food or water. Your body’s protective mechanisms take over and actually prepare itself for survival by sparing every ounce of excess fluid and nutrient it has at its disposal.

Storing calories and fluids is actually the opposite of what a dieting exerciser is trying to achieve.

* Profuse sweating, although viewed as a healthy physiological response to intense exercise, creates a void in the body’s ability to function at its optimal level.

Similar to the restricted diet mentioned earlier, your body’s response to exercise-induced dehydration is to hold onto fluid. From 40 percent to 60 percent of a human’s body weight is water. Intracellular water is housed inside the cell, which is where 62 percent of the body’s water is located. Extracellular refers to water located outside the cell and constitutes about 38 percent of the body’s main water compartments.

Even modest levels of dehydration will cause the body to retain fluids and produce an elevation in scale weight.

* Over time, a dehydrated body becomes less effective at producing energy for daily tasks, not to mention intense exercise. A drop in exercise intensity also will reduce the amount of calories burned.

* Fluid replacement is critical to the development of a highly fit body. Water is the preferred fluid replacement drink. Unless you plan on exercising for over an hour a day, sports drinks are not necessary. In fact, their high sugar component may actually encourage the body to store fat.

Jim LaFountain is president of All-American Fitness Center in New Hartford. He has a master's degree in exercise science and is a certified strength and conditioning specialist. Write him at 1 Campion Road, New Hartford NY 13413.